My CD Cover :)

This is the album for The crimson Cucumbers. Fortunatly, most of the music video is photo animated so i had a couple of hundred photographs to choose from! I think its important that the band appear on the front in "cut out" filter style which is used in the video. The audience will see the band members and also be reminded of their newest release. Ive included two video stills of the protagonist James, looking out onto the river thames and also walking along the southbank to give a sense of location as The cucumbers are a london band. I later discovered that the album cover needs space for 2 disks- the cd and the dvd. So ill go onto doing that now...

damn silhouettes...

In total annoyance, the footage of Ross, George, and Kirsty was partly filmed length ways to get fit their whole bodys in a portrait position, but once uploaded it meant that they were flipped 270 degrees so they are standing on the left side of the screen :(

so that meant only parts where they were upright could be used. Trying to find a silhouette effect wasnt easy and we are still not totally convinced with what we've chosen. An effect called "edges" on i-movie whereby the outlines of a chosen subject glows and everything else is blackout. It worked in the way that their mouths are obscured )because they werent singing the correct lyrics) but doesnt look brilliant.
So we probably will be doing this again and hopefully get an actualy silhouette by placing the light behind their faces or creating shadows. We need clear wall, a dark room and a big light! (and help from George Ross and kirsty :P)

Digipack...CD Covers

The CD cover/poster is an essential part of poduction for a band so for my Digipack, i looked at other album art that i was interested in. Ladyhawke's album was released in 2008 and by the same record company as my band, The Crimson Cucumbers. I really like the colourful artistry on the front. Its very playful and looks hand drawn. I also like the simplicity of the typography.


Passion Pit is the band who produced the record sung by my band, Moth's wings, and is the title of the album i'm currently making. This is Passion Pit's second album Chunk of Change. I like the abstract geometric lines which i may use in my cd cover or poster. Apart from that, the cover is rather simple :)It important that i look at cd covers of a fellow Indie band to make my own realistic as possible.


Elton John is another great artist who has a very colourful and arty cover. These wacky images run right through his "Captain Fantastic" album into his book inside. As an a member of the public, i like owning this cd because of the music and interesting artwork. It wouldnt be the same if i had downloaded it which is what is happened in this day and age of music.

Our ideas on screen

The pop up style beginning is finally finished !the whole process was done photoshop, finding images of london landmarks, shops, people, objects etc, filtering them onto cut out and layering them ontop of one another.


The umbrella sequence starts at the end of the pop up and beginning of the photo animation.The cardboard cut out look shows james standing on the bridge which then cuts to james (in real life) like this



An additional thing we added whilst on photoshop was a colour fade on James walking. The photo starts in black and white and as he moves across from left to right, the colour moves with him. its as if he brings life to the shotThe sihlouette effect we wanted didnt work out to well but we tried out an effect on imovie which we think works well. You can still see the outline of George.
And adding to that we made george x5!

IT'S ALIVE!!

Weve got quite far with the video now. Ive finished creating the instrumental scene, on photoshop where moths fly onto the screen and fly around in circles. It took a while because there was so many moths at a given time and these moths had to be moved onto the every picture and put into a different position each time to create flowing animation. Each moth was put on one at at time and moved. Eventually i found a way to merge the moths toegther as a group and move them as one layer; it saved me some time :)

Silhouettes?

At the moment it is still unsure whether or not the band members can be blacked out from the background. Jerry the great is experimenting with what we have on a different program and if possible we are going to use it. Alternatively, we can use effects on final cut. They may not be able to darken the whole person( which wont look as convincing because george Kirsty and Ross weren't singing along to the lyrics) but we will play around with what we have.

Re-shoot!

Yesterday afternoon we shot the band section of our music video with George, Kirsty and Ross who are our "Crimson Cucumbers!"
We would like to have the band silhouetted so we found a white screen to use behind them. Later we will play around with the clips on final cut pro to do this.
George Kirsty and Ross each individually stood in front of the screen and sang along to moths wings while singing in my singstar microphone.
At the end the 3 danced around together in front of the camera and we hope to use that also.






we will take profile pictures of the band and combine them together in photoshop. We are originally going to use split screen, but its easier for us to do it this way. Like the the pop up city at the beginning, there will be effects on these pictures and also we might use this effect on the pictures of the band when they are dancing together.

The day went successfully, but now we need to transfer the footage to final cut where we can play around with effects and to see whether we can use silhouettes.